11:15 a.m. I've just come in towork after a long night of watching bad movies on the tube. I'm in a bad mood and it's a Monday. But some people don't know enough to stay out of trouble's way...
11:16 a.m. Call from a local Web manager. "Why is the system so slow?" he whines. "It's taking me more than 30 seconds to retrieve a document!"
I check the process listing for our web server. Several searches are running, jacking up the load. I make a note of the one looking for "personal sex aids", and shoot them all; the load now is 0.34. "Check it now," I tell him and hang up. Another satisfied customer...
11:17 a.m. Call from a user. "I can't get this search to work on your web site. What am I doing wrong?" "What were you searching for?" I ask. "Uh... er..." "It wouldn't have been 'sex aids', by any chance?" I can almost see the sickly smile on the other end of the phone. "Leave out the word personal", I tell him, "it's one of our special stop words." Also, you should try the url "http://www.digital.altavista.com". It's a better interface to our search engine. "Uh, oh, okay", he says, relieved to have gotten off so easy.
11:18 a.m. Call from a user. "Uh, I tried that url you gave me about the search engine, but I can't find the interface." "What did you type?" I say, putting on my best "poor know-nothing lusers" voice. "www.digital.altavista.com" he answers. "No, no, no, I told you altavista.digital.com. Can't you get anything right?" The user apologizes profusely and hangs up.
11:19 a.m. Call from the same user. "Hey, I got 20000 hits, but they're all about..." He pauses. "Yeeeees?!" I say, beginning to get irritated with this user. "About the disease, you know, AIDS. But I wanted..." I cut him off. "What was your user name again? I bet you have something wrong in your browser X application defaults setup." That always gets 'em. II promise to fix it for him. After he hangs up, I post a note to alt. sex.bestiality from his account explaining that he is looking for sex aids and could somebody please send all available information. I make a mental note to watch the responses...
11:20 a.m. Time for a caffeine fix. Turn off phone ringer and change voice mail message to "Columbia complaints office; please leave your message after the beep." I usually get a lot of good information that way. In addition I forward my phone to my office mate who will never know the difference.
12:20 p.m. MUCH better. I check the alt.sex.bestiality newsgroup to see how the responses are coming along. A little slow yet, so I post one myself, using an anonymous posting service.
12:45 p.m. Officemate's phone rings. I hide my smile of satisfaction as his nap is interrupted. "Yes?" I hear him say. "You can't get access to your web files? Okay, I'll check on it." He hangs up.
I offer to help him out. "What's the user name? And where are the files?" He tells me. It's a user from the Digital Library section that has always been a pain in the ass. I go to the specified directory and set the permissions. I also replace one of the gifs with something I retrieved off of alt.sex.bestiality. "All fixed," I say. My officemate thanks me and goes back to sleep.
12:50 p.m. Remember to undo phone forwarding.
to be continued...